Stephanie Nava-Moreno, a seventh grader at STRIVE Prep Sunnyside, wrote poetry about gentrification forcing her family out of the northwest Denver ( RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post).

Striving to break down racial and socioeconomic segregation through different kinds of boundaries for neighborhood schools in Denver, a glimpse at Denver Public Schools’ budget for next school year, two charter schools squabble about the name of a founding father, restorative justice in Aurora Public Schools and a student skipping school to try self-learning highlight the latest edition of Take Note …

Kids at Ashley Elementary School took part in an all school rally to cheer on the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who were about to take their first PARCC tests (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post).

In this week’s education news roundup, a closer look at how Common Core has changed classrooms and schools, a cowboy church causes ripples in a southern Colorado school district, a school silences a valedictorian who wanted to use his graduation speech to come out as gay, an examination of the latest teacher turnover numbers and college officials defend trips to Asia that have yet to bear much fruit …

Carla Farris talks with other parents and some educators about opting her daughter out of standardized testing. The group met last month in Highlands Ranch. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post).

Lots going on in education this week. Did you hear that new state assessments of some sort debuted in Colorado? We may have written a word or two about it.

The week also featured a complicating wrinkle to a bipartisan student data privacy bill at the Statehouse, a forum on student protest movements, a voucher ruling in The South and more. On to this week’s Take Note …

On Monday, more than 13,000 DPS students at 53 schools began taking Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS, assessments, and on Tuesday that number rose to more than 36,000 students at 153 DPS district-run and charter schools.

Some schools have reported issues, ranging from quick fixes, such as a classroom being unable to login to the assessments due to an incorrect URL and passcode, to an issue caused by a district-level proctor cache setting; however, as of now, the vast majority of tests have gone smoothly. The proctor cache issue affected some workstations in 25 district-run schools on Monday. It was resolved by noon that same day and did not reoccur on Tuesday. The error prevented certain student workstations from connecting to our proctor cache setup in order to download the test form content. These schools rescheduled the affected assessments for Monday afternoon or Tuesday.

Additionally, DPS is working with Pearson, the vendor contracted to create and administer the CMAS Reading and Math assessment platform, to address platform issues that have reportedly affected small numbers of students.

The DPS Department of Technology Services (DoTS) and Department of Assessment, Research and Evaluation are assisting schools via a reporting hotline, and are working as quickly as possible to troubleshoot and correct any issues – large or small — that arise with this new assessment platform.

UPDATE: 6 p.m., Monday, March 9: Cherry Creek School District officials said technological glitches in PARCC testing Monday have been resolved, and all students were able to complete the tests.

District spokeswoman Tustin Amole said the district worked with state education department officials and testing vendor Pearson to resolve the problem (see below). She said the precise issue has not been pinpointed but may have involved too many people on the system at once.

Amole also provided a first look at data on the number of district students who have opted out or refused PARCC testing, at least at the high school level (ninth, 10th and 11th grade):

The occasion: the Joint Education Committee getting its hands on a much-anticipated report from an advisory task force that urged reducing the testing burden without forsaking holding schools and districts accountable for student achievement.

Why the yawning gap in the estimated time given over to testing? Are either numbers right? What exactly is being measured?

For parents wondering how their kids’ schools stack up, a coalition of nonprofit groups Monday released its fourth annual report card using easy-to-grasp letter grades their children know all too well.

The online tool, Colorado School Grades, relies on academic growth and proficiency data from the Colorado Department of Education and uses a formula developed with the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver.

Some quick takeaways: Top-ranked schools are scattered throughout the state, strong elementary school options abound in the Denver metro area, the Colorado Springs region has high school down, and the overwhelming majority of top-performing schools have something distinguishing them, either as a charter school, K-8 school, innovation status or some other special trait.

Summit Middle School receives a solar panel for winning the ReNew Our Schools competition. (Provided By Center for ReSource Conservation)

Aurora students are joining the fight to conserve energy in a competition aimed at increasing energy awareness, creating green habits and introducing students to energy-related career fields.

The Center for ReSource Conservation, or CRC, is bringing its ReNew Our Schools competition to the Aurora Public School District. Twelve schools will compete against one another in a competition in which students must find ways to conserve energy for a month. The top three schools will win $20,000 solar arrays for their buildings.

Schools from across the district will participate, including Aurora Hills Middle School, Aurora Quest K-8, Crawford Elementary and Aurora West College Prep Academy. The contest began Tuesday and ends April 30.

Students will be able to track their energy expenditures using eGauge electricity monitors provided by eGauge and Magnelab, two local companies. The gauges will display real-time changes in energy consumption using a Web program. This will enable students to adjust their strategies according to how much energy they are saving. Students can also earn points by getting homeowners to agree to save energy.Read more…

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Twelve schools and two public charter management organizations from Aurora, Brighton, Denver, Littleton and Jefferson County are recipients of a $435,000 awards program grant from the Foundations for Great Schools.

The Foundation for Great Schools – a grant program comprised of partnerships between The Anschutz Foundation, Daniels Fund, Fox Family Foundation, Gates Family Foundation and Piton Foundation – selects annual award winners from among a 12-school district area.

Winners are chosen based on a variety of factors, including academic performance and growth, percentage of students qualifying for the Federal free and reduced lunch program, school leadership, culture, and instructional effectiveness.

“The schools we are recognizing today have shown they can motivate and teach students to make significant academic progress,” said Tom Kaesemeyer, executive director of the Fox Family Foundation and spokesman for Foundations of Great Schools. “They have taken whatever challenges they might face and turned them into opportunities for student success. Each of these schools is achieving very strong results in academic growth and performance, and the strategies they are taking to achieve that success deserve to recognized.” Read more…

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A grant aimed at providing assistance for ongoing recovery efforts following the mass shooting at the Century Aurora 16 theater has been awarded to Aurora Public Schools by the U.S. Department of Education.

The district will receive a $50,000 Project School Emergency Response to Violence grant, which is doled out by the office of Safe and Healthy Students — a sector of the DOE. The department awarded more than $29 million to 97 grantees since the grant program began in 2001.

“This senseless attack profoundly impacted students and educators throughout the city, and these resources will help the Aurora community provide special care to those who need it,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a statement.

In a news release, the DOE noted that more than 300 APS students and staff were impacted by the shooting, with several students from Gateway and Hinkley High Schools being directly affected. The mass shooting that left 12 dead and at least 58 injured took place July 20, almost a week before high school registration in the district was scheduled to begin.

Colorado Classroom provides ground-level reporting on what’s going on in the state’s public schools and on college campuses, looking at people, places, issues, trends and innovative approaches to education.